People who bought this also bought...

War Factory

Thorvald Spear, resurrected from his death over 100 years earlier, continues to hunt Penny Royal, the rogue AI and dangerous war criminal on the run from Polity forces. Beyond the Graveyard, a lawless and deadly area in deep space, Spear follows the trail of several enemy Prador, the crab-like alien species with a violent history of conflict with humanity. Sverl, a Prador genetically modified by Penny Royal and slowly becoming human, pursues Cvorn, a Prador harboring deep hatred for the Polity.

Dark Intelligence

One man will transcend death to seek vengeance. One woman will transform herself to gain power. And no one will emerge unscathed... Thorvald Spear wakes in a hospital to find he's been brought back from the dead. What's more, he died in a human vs. alien war that ended a century ago.

Shadow of the Scorpion: A Novel of the Polity

Raised to adulthood during the end of the war, between the human Polity and a vicious alien race, the Prador, Ian Cormac is haunted by childhood memories of a sinister scorpion-shaped war drone and the burden of losses he doesn’t remember. Cormac signs up with Earth Central Security and is sent out to help restore and maintain order on worlds devastated by the war. There, he discovers that though the Prador remain as murderous as ever, they are not anywhere near as treacherous or dangerous as some of his fellow humans.

The Gabble: And Other Stories

In the eight years since his first full-length novel, Gridlinked, was published by Pan Macmillan, Neal Asher has firmly established himself as one of the leading British writers of science fiction, and his novels are now translated in many languages. Most of his stories are set in a galactic future-scape called The Polity, and with this collection of marvellously inventive and action-packed short stories, he takes us further into the manifold diversities of that amazing universe.

Hilldiggers: A Novel of the Polity

During a war between two planets in the same solar system - each occupied by adapted humans - what is thought to be a cosmic superstring is discovered. After being cut, this object collapses into four cylindrical pieces, each about the size of a tube train. Each is densely packed with either alien technology or some kind of life. They are placed for safety in three ozark cylinders of a massively secure space station.

Line War

The Polity is under attack from a "melded" AI entity with control of the lethal Jain technology, yet the attack seems to have no coherence. When one of Erebus' wormships kills millions on the world of Klurhammon, a high-tech agricultural world of no real tactical significance, agent Ian Cormac is sent to investigate, though he is secretly struggling to control a new ability no human being should possess... and beginning to question the motives of his AI masters.

Tripp Southern says:"Meh. Did not care a bit about Cormack in the end"

The Technician

The Theocracy has been dead for 20 years, and the Polity rules on Masada - but it is an order that the rebels of the Tidy Squad cannot accept, and the iconic Jeremiah Tombs is top of their hitlist. Tombs, meanwhile, has escaped his sanatorium. His insanity must be cured, because the near-mythical hooder, called "the Technician", that attacked him all those years ago, did something to his mind even the AIs fail to understand. Tombs might possess information about the suicide of an entire alien race.

Prador Moon: A Novel of the Polity, Book 1

Neal Asher takes on first contact, Polity style. This original novel recounts the first contact between the aggressive Prador aliens, and the Polity Collective as it is forced to retool its society to a war footing. The overwhelming brute force of the Prador dreadnaughts causes several worlds and space stations to be overrun. Prador Moon follows the initial Polity defeats, to the first draws, and culminates in what might be the first Polity victory, told from the point of view of two unlikely heroes.

The Departure: The Owner, Book 1

The Argus Space Station looks down on a nightmarish Earth. And from this safe distance, the Committee enforces its despotic rule. There are too many people and too few resources, and they need 12 billion to die before Earth can be stabilised. So corruption is rife, people starve, and the poor are policed by mechanised overseers and identity-reader guns. Citizens already fear the brutal Inspectorate with its pain inducers. But to reach its goals, the Committee will unleash satellite laser weaponry, taking carnage to a new level. This is the world Alan Saul wakes to.

Polity Agent: Agent Cormac, Book 4

From 800 years in the future, a runcible gate is opened into the Polity and those coming through it have been sent specially to take the alien ‘Maker’ back to its home civilization in the Small Magellanic cloud. Once these refugees are safely through, the gate itself is rapidly shut down – because something alien is pursuing them. The gate is then dumped into a nearby sun. From those refugees who get through, agent Cormac learns that the Maker civilization has been destroyed by pernicious virus known as the Jain technology.

The Skinner: The Spatterjay Series: Book 1

To the remote planet Spatterjay come three travellers with very different missions. Janer is directed there by the hornet Hive-mind; Erlin comes to find the sea captain who can teach her to live; and Keech - dead for seven hundred years - has unfinished business with a notorious criminal.Spatterjay is a watery world where the human population inhabits the safety of the Dome and only the quasi-immortal hoopers are safe outside amidst a fearful range of voracious life-forms.

Fallen Dragon

In the distant future, corporations have become sustainable communities with their own militaries, and corporate goals have essentially replaced political ideology. On a youthful, rebellious impulse, Lawrence joined the military of a corporation that he now recognizes to be ruthless and exploitative. His only hope for escape is to earn enough money to buy his place in a better corporation.

A Night Without Stars: A Novel of the Commonwealth: Chronicle of the Fallers Series, Book 2

The planet is isolated from the rest of the universe, unable to seek help as it's targeted by hostile aliens. Bienvenido's ruling authorities have slowly responded to this gradual infiltration, but they have no idea that a highly organized invasion is now under way, designed to wipe out all human life on the planet. All factions must work together to survive. Unfortunately, due to prejudice against enhanced Eliter humans and crippling technophobia, the parochial government won't collaborate.

The Line of Polity

Outlink station Miranda has been destroyed by a nanomycelium, and the very nature of this sabotage suggests that the alien bioconstruct Dragon - a creature as untrustworthy as it is gigantic - is somehow involved. Sent out on a titanic Polity dreadnought, the Occam Razor, agent Cormac must investigate the disaster. Meanwhile, on the remote planet Masada, the long-term rebellion can never rise aboveground, as the slave population is subjugated by orbital laser arrays controlled by the Theocracy in their cylinder worlds.

Navigators of Dune

The story line tells the origins of the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood and its breeding program, the human-computer Mentats, and the Navigators (the Spacing Guild), as well as a crucial battle for the future of the human race, in which reason faces off against fanaticism. These events have far-reaching consequences that will set the stage for Dune, millennia later.

We Are Legion (We Are Bob): Bobiverse, Book 1

Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street. Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets.

The Reality Dysfunction: Night's Dawn Trilogy, Book 1

In AD 2600, the human race is finally beginning to realize its full potential. Hundreds of colonized planets scattered across the galaxy host a multitude of prosperous and wildly diverse cultures. Genetic engineering has pushed evolution far beyond nature's boundaries, defeating disease and producing extraordinary spaceborn creatures. Huge fleets of sentient trader starships thrive on the wealth created by the industrialization of entire star systems, and throughout inhabited space the Confederation Navy keeps the peace.

Remanence: Confluence, Book 2

Defying NASA, Jane Holloway, the linguist of the Providence expedition, commandeers the alien ship that crew explored. She sets off to return that ship's navigator to his home world, determined to discover who was behind the genocide that destroyed his original crew. But when she gets there, she finds his world devastated by the same plague. The remaining members of his race, uniquely gifted at navigating the stars, are stranded across the galaxy. And someone doesn't want those lost navigators found.

Warrior King: Odyssey One, Book 5

Battle-weary after a desperate fight to save Earth from the Drasin alien onslaught, Confederation Captain Eric Weston is tasked with a perilous new mission. He and the crew of the Odysseus must hunt down those who unleashed the hellish attack on his homeworld and that of Earth's Priminae allies.

The Naked God: Night's Dawn Trilogy, Book 3

Quinn Dexter is loose on Earth, destroying the giant arcologies one at a time. As Louise Kavanagh tries to track him down, she manages to acquire some strange and powerful allies whose goal doesn't quite match her own. The campaign to liberate Mortonridge from the possessed degenerates into a horrendous land battle, the kind that hasn't been seen by humankind for 600 years; then some of the protagonists escape in a very unexpected direction.

The Medusa Chronicles

Howard Falcon almost lost his life in an accident as the first human astronaut to explore the atmosphere of Jupiter - and a combination of human ingenuity and technical expertise brought him back. But he is no longer himself. Instead he has been changed into an augmented human: part man, part machine, and exceptionally capable.

Terms of Enlistment: Frontlines, Book 1

The year is 2108, and the North American Commonwealth is bursting at the seams. For welfare rats like Andrew Grayson, there are only two ways out of the crime-ridden and filthy welfare tenements, where you’re restricted to 2,000 calories of badly flavored soy every day. You can hope to win the lottery and draw a ticket on a colony ship settling off-world, or you can join the service. With the colony lottery a pipe dream, Andrew chooses to enlist in the armed forces for a shot at real food, a retirement bonus, and maybe a ticket off Earth.

Endeavour: Sleeping Gods, Book 1

In 2118 the first daring mission to another star, Tau Ceti - 12 light-years away - is launched. Tom Hites and Harry Cosgrove command the starship Endeavour on an epic journey to solve the Fermi paradox. From the first nearly disastrous steps on a distant world, their quest takes them further than they ever imagined.

Publisher's Summary

Mysterious aliens...ruthless terrorists...androids with attitude...genetic manipulation...punch-ups with lasers...giant spaceships...what more do you want? A collection by the author of Gridlinked, The Skinner, In the Line of Polity, Cowl, Brass Man, and The Voyage of the Sable Keech.

This creative collection of short stories by Neal Asher will provide an excellent introduction to his work for those unfamiliar with it, as the standalone stories cover his favorite themes and strengths: high-intensity action, richly described alien biologies, villainous religious cults, and much violence. Returning readers will also be rewarded by references and tie-ins to his other future histories, The Polity, and The Owner universes.

The title novella, 'The Engineer', deserves special attention due to its length and polish. A Polity story, it tells of the discovery of an ancient alien escape pod by a science vessel who manage to revive the advanced being within. News of the discovery brings attention from various factions and soon a classic Asher full-scale conflict erupts. I was a little surprised by the altruism and bio-centric technology of the Jain alien in this story, having only the example from Asher's "Orbus" novel to compare with, but as is clearly shown with the various human factions in the Polity stories, species and societies are more diverse that any single specimen would illustrate.

The three "Owner" stories shared a common plot device for their climaxes, so I won't spoil them with a description, other than to say I would have appreciated a more varied 'reveal' in the stories chosen to accompany one another in a collection. Taken individually, all three are thrilling and wholly engaging stories that bring a low-tech fantasy element to Asher's SF which I hadn't seen before.

My favorite story in the collection, "Spatterjay" is probably the most dependent on a familiarity with Asher's other novels, in this case the Polity trilogy of the same title, as it deals with a setting and characters so vividly colorful that they are difficult to absorb in so few pages. It serves as a prequel to those novels, and even more so than any of the other stories in the collection it brings some wild alien biology to life for the reader- a whole ecology in fact!

The other five stories here each have interesting aspects, but can be grouped and summarized by saying they revolve around unique alien biological oddities which are expanded and extrapolated into skeletons on which to hang a brief story. Interpersonal drama, tension, and subtlety are not really to be found here, but imaginative and intense moments of action will make them memorable for most readers, I believe.

There were several stories in this book. The first story was interesting more than the others. In most of the stories I didn't feel much of a connection. The stories were OK but didn't have enough meat to carry them thru.

If you could sum up The Engineer ReConditioned in three words, what would they be?

Old school, humorous, engaging.

What other book might you compare The Engineer ReConditioned to, and why?

Its a tricky one, I think I would be drawn towards sci-fi/fantasy books I read as a child/teenager, Asher walks the line between both. The first story was quite stark and reminded me of Alien the movie (not a bad thing). After that it cheered up a bit, and amongst other things, for me it actually conjours up images and experiences of playing borderlands and fallout 3 PS3/Xbox games, in that the storytelling at times is tongue in cheek and pokes fun at conventions. It also has the classic god-like space traveller appearing throughout its stories, leaving me wanting to read more of these books to learn more about his origins.

Did Todd McLaren do a good job differentiating each of the characters? How?

Generally alright, the best thing I can say is his voices never got in the way of the story, which probably means actually he did a pretty good job.

If you made a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

Difficult to answer because its a collection of shorter stories. but I'll try :0The Universe, Re-Engineered

Any additional comments?

Yes, I listen to my audiobooks on the move either on foot or in the car, and often am not able to eperate my generic audio playing device. This means I need clear audio breaks to signify the ending of a story and the start of the next. There were times listening to this when i was thrown with the abrupt conclusion of a story wandering into the start of the next which is why I scored the performance down (so not a reflection of the reader per se). A real shame as otherwise I probably would have scored this a 5.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Elaine

Wirral, United Kingdom

3/23/13

Overall

"Excellent Asher"

As with every Neal Asher book, this is completely marvellous from start to finish. His short stories are always readable and give us extra insight into life in the Polity. Others are stand-alone and we are even treated to an Owner story.

My only complaint is that I don't understand why an American reader was chosed for this, as the books are written by a British author. Having to listen to Todd McLaren call Golem 'Gollums' is incredibly irritating, amongst many instances. If the wonderful William Gaminara was not available, were there not other British readers who would have done almost as well?

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Report Inappropriate Content

If you find this review inappropriate and think it should be removed from our site, let us know. This report will be reviewed by Audible and we will take appropriate action.